Operation Makeover
by Rhoswen Eolande
Summary: A new teacher decides Dudley Dursley needs to be punished for picking on his cousin. A counselor decides Harry Potter needs a little bit of help. A primary school era prequel to an AU Harry Potter series.
1. Chapter 1

Author's Note: Yes, yes, I know, another story. I have come to a realization about myself. Let me explain.

I have an anxiety disorder. So when I post a story before it's completed, I become anxious and obsessive, use up all my energy too quickly, feel too much pressure, and end up never finishing the story. I flit, as you've seen, from idea to idea, constantly anxious, never finishing a project.

Well, that has to stop.

So I have made a promise to myself - only one series or story at a time. And I'm only going to post a book or story after I've finished it.

This is my brand new Harry Potter AU series, and I am going to try to see it through to the end. Just this. Nothing else. This prequel included, there should be eight books, each with its own separate story and document. I have completely finished the prequel - this story - and am now posting it. I will let you know via a post in this story when book one is up, but be warned. I have not started book one yet, and I do not plan on posting it until I've finished it.

With that said, please enjoy this little prequel to my Harry Potter AU series.

* * *

Chapter One

Blue cloudless sky, hot sun, sucker punch, face eating ground packed dirt. Another day at school for nine-year-old Harry Potter.

He barely had time to sit up, watching blood drip from his lip onto the school playground floor, before he scrambled up and tried to make another run for it. Piers Polkiss grabbed his arms from behind and hauled him around, facing Dudley Dursley. Piers pinned his limbs behind his back, even as Harry struggled, and Dudley sunk a fist into his gut, making Harry gasp and keel over, feeling nauseous. Then there was another blow across the chin that would leave a blue and purple bruise and sent Harry's head flying back.

Piers was the scrawny rat, Dudley the gigantic bully. The other three were Dudley's personal cheering squad. Each had a perfect role in life, refined to a T, uniquely suited for their position.

Harry was also the perfect victim. Quiet and small and scrawny, all bony knees and elbows, passive, more interested in running away than fighting, in baggy old secondhand clothes, his glasses taped up at the bridge because of all the times Dudley had punched him there.

Dudley and his friends laughed and cheered as Dudley punched and punched Harry, a cruel grin eating away at Dudley's face. He leaned into Harry's ear and said, "You know what Mum and Dad call you, right? They say you're a freak. And that's what you are. You're a _freak_."

Dudley and Harry lived together. Harry was an orphan living with his aunt and uncle; Dudley was his cousin.

Hot, helpless rage filled Harry - and then in a great explosion all the other boys had been thrown backward by some invisible force. They skidded backward on their behinds, looking up in shock.

"You - you're doing your freak thing again, aren't you?!" Dudley snarled.

Harry was staring. "I - I don't know what happened, I've told you, I don't -" Strange things often happened around Harry, and he was always accused of making them happen, which just wasn't true. He didn't will anything to occur. Perhaps the wind had knocked Dudley and his gang back? It seemed the only rational cause.

(This was how Harry protected himself. He told himself he wasn't causing these things, so he couldn't control whether or not they happened.)

As Dudley stood up and stalked toward him, ruddy fury in his expression and his eyes gleaming, all Harry could think was that Dudley would tell on him. Harry would be sent home with a note and his aunt and uncle would lock him away in the cupboard under the stairs with the spiders again. Possibly with no meals.

And all over something he hadn't even really done.

Dudley kicked at Harry's shins and knocked him to the ground, scraping blood along the dirt again. Then he stepped on Harry's arm so hard it fell behind him, there was a large crack, and hot debilitating pain filled Harry's arm. He let out a single noise of agony.

All the other children on the playground had gone silent, watching fearfully, as always afraid of getting too close to that odd Harry Potter for fear of being beaten up themselves. This was how it always worked. Dudley and his gang always chased Harry, Harry always ran away, Harry was caught and beaten, Dudley was never punished at home or even seriously at school by apathetic teachers. That was life.

Then:

" _Dudley Dursley!"_

The new teacher, Harry registered distantly through his crippling, hazy pain. A young Asian American woman fresh at her first teaching job at St Grogory's Primary School. Miss Hanzen.

"He - he was trying to hurt me, Miss Hanzen, I -"

"Can it, Dursley, I saw the whole thing," came Miss Hanzen's voice flatly. "All of you, come with me." She spoke with the furious idealism of the young, unembittered, and unjaded.

Then suddenly there was a hand lifting Harry up. His good arm was slung over Miss Hanzen's shoulders, and he stumbled his way toward the school nurse's office, Dudley's gang moving uncertainly behind them, through the double doors and inside the school building, down screechy linoleum hallways. Harry saw Dudley smirk and move to make an invisible kick at Miss Hanzen's behind. His friends snickered, but said nothing.

Harry was dropped at the nurse's office. "I - I think my arm is broken," he managed. Miss Hanzen and the school nurse shared a look Harry couldn't decipher. He must look awful, he decided.

"Very well, then, let's get you cleaned up," said the nurse kindly, leading him behind a screen into the back. She sat him down on her rock-hard bed, gave his arm a cast, swabbed and patted and cleaned him up as nicely as she could. She didn't say a word the entire time, and in the soothing silence, with Dudley and his aunt and uncle gone, Harry finally started to relax.

* * *

Dudley Dursley and his gang followed Miss Hanzen down the hall toward the headmistress's office. "Miss -" Dudley began at last.

"Silence, Dursley. What you did was absolutely unacceptable," said Miss Hanzen frigidly.

Dudley's face reddened and his eyes narrowed.

They entered the headmistress's side office, the secretary sitting at her desk. "I need to see the headmistress," said Miss Hanzen. "Extremely urgent."

They were let within, and Miss Hanzen said without preamble, "Dudley Dursley had been bullying his cousin."

Dudley rolled his eyes and scoffed, looking away.

The headmistress's eyebrows rose. She was a stiff, dignified older woman - the kind who still wore lace collars and brooches. "Harry Potter? You know, we've been having problems with him. Odd incidents of misbehavior. He once climbed onto the roof of the school kitchens, if you can believe that."

Dudley knew this wasn't entirely true - his cousin had _floated_ during a beating onto the roof of the school kitchens. Then the little dork had tried to blame the whole thing on wind currents. Even Dudley was smarter than that - smart enough to his know his cousin was a weirdo. But he said nothing. That information was only for his parents and their cupboard punishments.

"I think he may have been trying to escape his cousin, ma'am," said Miss Hanzen. "I watched from a window. With no provocation, those boys chased Potter across the playground, punched him, grabbed him, pinned him down, beat him up, and broke his arm. He's in the school infirmary right now, having a cast put on."

The headmistress was silent for a long time. "This is very serious," she said at last, quietly, her hands crossed. "Mr Dursley. Anything to say?"

Dudley shook, face reddening - his friends backed away - and he started a tantrum. At nine years old, he started a toddler era tantrum. Screaming incoherently, his fists flailing, he sent papers everywhere, sent a vase crashing and an end table falling over, pounded on the headmistress's desk. He made a horrible racket. He was crying and screeching and screaming.

"Mr Dursley! Mr Dursley!" said Miss Hanzen, the headmistress standing in alarm. Teachers came running. It took two grown men to hold down Dudley Dursley.

"Mr Dursley, you are already on academic probation for poor grades," said the headmistress coldly, her eyes flashing as she loomed over him. "You have now been accused of breaking a fellow student's arm, you have damaged headmistress property, and you have displayed marvelous mental instability.

"You and your friends are hereby expelled from St Grogory's. And no amount of crying and screaming will change my mind.

"I am sending you all to the local problem school for juvenile delinquents, and I am recommending that you in particular see a psychiatrist. It is my professional opinion as a former instructor that you badly need one."

"But - but -" Dudley stared up at her, horrified. "But Harry's the one you're supposed to be punishing. Not me!"

"This time, Mr Potter did nothing wrong," said the headmistress coolly. "He is a B student and the worst thing he's ever done is try to climb a school building once when he was seven. Perhaps away from you. I suppose I should have thought of that. He's also quiet and self controlled.

"Something that cannot be said for you, Mr Dursley," she whispered into his horrified face.

For once, Dudley Dursley's fearless gang looked terrified.

* * *

Harry stood in front of his uncle in the living room that night, being yelled at. The Dursleys' house was a nice, spacious two story suburban one, full of soft rugs, elegant furniture, and gleaming surfaces, paid for by Uncle Vernon's corporate job - hence his suit and tie.

"I don't know how you did it, but you've ruined Dudley's school career for him!" Uncle Vernon boomed, his ruddy face slowly going purple and a tic going in his temple. "I'll have you know if I decided to beat you, you'd fully deserve it!"

Harry was staring at the floor. He muttered something.

"What was that?!" Uncle Vernon snapped.

Harry sighed. "He broke my arm," he said, louder, but still quiet. "And then he had a tantrum in the headmistress's office. _That's_ why he was expelled."

Between his uncle - who was also quite large - and his cousin, Harry had mastered speed and good reflexes. So he managed to duck out of the way of Uncle Vernon's arm in time just as he reached for his collar. He backed up, fast, as Uncle Vernon advanced on him, until his back hit the wall.

Uncle Vernon got very close into his face. "So you expect me to believe you're the innocent party?!" he spat.

"My poor Duddy is going to a school with awful children!" Aunt Petunia wailed, clutching at Dudley. "He's a boisterous boy, but he wouldn't hurt a fly!" She glared at him. "You must have done something, boy!"

"Precisely," Uncle Vernon growled. They all seemed to be ignoring the cast on Harry's arm. "Go to your cupboard. Stay there. No meals."

Harry slid sideways along the wall, and scampered off into his cupboard. His bruises and swelling lip were already healed. The arm, he knew, would heal in the next few days. Harry had always healed from things unnaturally well and unnaturally fast.

He sat in his cupboard in the darkness, getting lost in his own thoughts. Strange things were always happening to him. Once, Aunt Petunia, sick of Harry's messy hair, had shaved all his hair off. He'd hated the haircut, but for some reason it had all grown back overnight. Another time, a teacher had been making fun of him in class and her hair had suddenly turned blue. Yet another time, Aunt Petunia had been trying to force him into a revolting old sweater of Dudley's - all Harry's big, baggy clothes used to be Dudley's - and it shrunk before their very eyes until the biggest thing it might have fit was a hand puppet.

There must be a rational explanation for all of it, but don't tell his aunt and uncle that. They loved blaming things on him. It was always the same - cupboard punishments, no food, shouting. Uncle Vernon grabbed him and threatened to beat him a lot, but he never did. His aunt and uncle stuck to name calling and reminding him of how much of a burden he was and excluding him from things - when they paid attention to him at all.

Harry's entire living memory had been miserable. He'd spent his whole life with the Dursleys. Aunt Petunia had told him once that his parents had died in a car crash when he was a baby. That was where he'd gotten the lightning bolt shaped scar on his forehead, the one part of his appearance that he liked - he'd survived and they hadn't.

He couldn't remember being in the car when his parents had died. Sometimes, when he strained his memory during long hours in his cupboard, he came up with a strange vision - a blinding flash of green light and a burning pain on his forehead. This, he supposed, was the car crash, though he couldn't imagine where all the green light came from. Perhaps they'd been going through a stoplight?

He didn't remember his parents at all. His aunt and uncle never spoke about them, and he was forbidden to ask questions. (He was also forbidden to watch cartoons, talk about dreams, or show signs of imagination.) There were no photographs of them in the house.

When he had been younger, Harry had dreamed and dreamed of some unknown relation coming to take him away, but it had never happened. The Dursleys were his only family. Eventually, he gave up on that dream, and took to leaving the house as much as possible, taking buses into the city and wandering the streets to keep away from home. It was the only time he ever got out - it wasn't like the Dursleys ever took him anywhere.

He could see a tiny ray of hope now. With Dudley and his gang gone from school, and Harry's penchant for wandering the streets, he would now only have to interact with his relatives for meals and the chores he was assigned by his aunt and uncle ("to earn his keep").

Still, it was a dreary life.

Yet sometimes he thought, or maybe hoped, that strangers in the street seemed to know him. Very strange strangers they were, too. A tiny old man in a violet top hat had bowed to him once while out shopping with Aunt Petunia and Dudley. After asking Harry furiously if he knew the man, Aunt Petunia had rushed them out of the shop without buying anything. A wild looking old woman dressed all in green had waved merrily at him once on a bus. A bald man in a very long purple coat had shaken his hand in the street once, and then walked away without a word.

The weirdest thing about all these people was the way they seemed to vanish the second Harry tried to get a closer look.

At school, Harry had no one. Everyone was too afraid of Dudley to interact with him, and anyway Harry was "too quiet" and "weird." Perhaps some of that would change now, but somehow he doubted it.

He brushed some spiders out of his hair irritably, sitting on the camp bed inside the cupboard. It doubled as his bedroom. He had so few belongings of his own that they could all fit in here. He was not allowed pocket money and was never bought presents, or even new clothes - he "cost enough to keep around as it was" and "would just ruin what he was given" and some years his birthday wasn't even acknowledged.

Harry had thought about arguing a time or two that even with all the weird occurrences Dudley ruined far more than he did - given everything he ever wanted, Dudley had no concept of the true value of items and gifts - but there was no point. In his aunt and uncle's eyes, their Dudley was perfect. He wasn't a freak.

At last, it seemed silent outside and all the lights looked off. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon always watched the evening news on the television, had tea, and then went to bed. He thought he'd heard their footsteps above him a few minutes ago.

Cautiously, he inched the cupboard door open and peered out. He had always wished he had a watch. It would have made ventures like this so much easier.

The coast was clear. All was black and silent.

His eyes already accustomed to blackness, he slunk out of the cupboard and crept silently down the hall to the kitchen. His stomach ached with hunger. He opened cupboard doors carefully, trying not to let them creak, and took out things that didn't need plates and wouldn't easily be missed: slices of bread, slices of cheese, and one of the many pieces of fruit from the fridge.

He hid all this underneath his baggy, ragged sweatshirt. It made him look even smaller and scrawnier than he actually was, but it _did_ have its uses. He snuck silently back to the cupboard under the stairs, and shut the door. All the food would have to be gone, along with the evidence, by tomorrow morning, but that shouldn't be a problem.

School or no school, Harry could expect not to leave his cupboard except for bathroom breaks for a good several days.

He hissed and looked down, brushing a black widow spider off of his wrist. It had left a bite, but that didn't matter - Harry wouldn't get sick.

Harry never got sick. It may have been the only reason why he was still alive.

He had a very strange dream that night. His dreams were always bizarre and vivid, when he had them. In this dream, Uncle Vernon was trying to grab at him, but a gigantic medical clipboard kept blocking his way.

Like he'd said before. Weird stuff.

* * *

Miss Hanzen had been warned by other teachers to prepare for her scheduled after-school meeting with Vernon and Petunia Dursley.

Mr Krainer had chuckled humorlessly. "They think their son is perfect and they love complaining loudly about things," he said. "They're not looking for information or appropriate punishment or a compromise. They don't want to talk about their injured nephew. They want to argue with you on behalf of their son."

Miss Hanzen hadn't believed anyone could be so blind or horrible. Then she met them.

Petunia Dursley was in a very ugly flowery dress and a blonde chiffon bun. Thin and bony, she looked almost comical next to the large and rotund Vernon Dursley, with his alarmingly boring tie and large black mustache. Miss Hanzen could see Dudley in them - the smooth blond hair and blue eyes from his mother, the large girth from his father - but Harry must take after the other side of his family. They didn't even look related. Harry was naturally small and unhealthily thin, with messy black hair, bright green eyes, a thin diamond-shaped face, and spectacles. She was starting to suspect they'd tried hard to make him look as ugly as possible, between the glasses, the haircut, and the clothes, but he wasn't nearly as distasteful as they were themselves.

The Dursley couple looked displeased. Mrs Dursley's lips were pursed and there was a tic going in Mr Dursley's temple.

"Please sit down," said Miss Hanzen, giving a false, polite smile, and they sat down across her school desk from her in the classroom.

"My Duddy would never intentionally hurt someone," said Mrs Dursley immediately. "It must have been an accident. A mistake. He was just playing! He gets physical when he plays, like boys do!"

"I'm sorry, Mrs Dursley, I saw the whole thing," said Miss Hanzen sympathetically. "It was definitely intentional. Your son has actually had other reports of bullying incidents in the past - incidents that had nothing to do with your nephew."

"And what qualifies all of you to make those kinds of judgments?" Mr Dursley growled.

"We're teachers and adults. We have eyes and we listen to our students, looking them over for signs of injury."

Mr Dursley snorted skeptically.

"The decision to expel Dudley was the headmistress's. I merely made the report about what I saw, and after that it was out of my hands," said Miss Hanzen uncomfortably. The Dursleys were glaring ferociously at her. "There is nothing I can do for your son. I actually wanted to talk to you about your nephew.

"He often comes to class injured, and attends quite irregularly. There will frequently be full weeks when he doesn't show up." Miss Hanzen sat back, watching them cannily. "Is he sick with something?"

There was no doubt about it, that was panic in the Dursleys' face for a moment. Miss Hanzen's suspicions began to solidify. This may be a case of abuse.

"His health is… delicate," Mr Dursley muttered, his face reddening even further than it already was. High blood pressure, perhaps.

"That's good to know," said Miss Hanzen quietly, still watching them cannily. "You might want to get a doctor's note concerning that. I'm not the only teacher who has noticed. We've discussed it in the past. We all find it quite… peculiar."

The Dursleys had frozen stiff.

Miss Hanzen gave a big, cheerful smile. "That's all I wanted to let you know."

They knew, now - that she knew. And so did everyone else.

* * *

Harry was called out of his cupboard, surprised, on the second day of his punishment. He blinked, adjusting slowly to the bright lights of the living room, his limbs slowly becoming less stiff and uncurling.

"You're going to school," said Uncle Vernon flatly. "And if you ever do anything weird again, boy, I'll have to get creative, because there will be no more cupboard punishments. You'll attend school every damn day."

"Why?" Harry asked before he could stop himself.

"Shut up!" Vernon snapped. "You're going to school and that's final!"

Harry ducked his head, trying to hide how pleased he was. His aunt and uncle never liked to see him too happy. "Yes, Uncle Vernon."

"And Dudley." Uncle Vernon turned to Dudley. "You are no longer allowed to hit your cousin. At all."

Dudley and Harry both looked up in disbelief.

Dudley's face reddened. "But I want to play with him! I wanna!"

"Oh, Duddy," said Aunt Petunia emotionally, "I know, you're just playing, but you have to be a good boy for us, okay? And not hit your cousin."

Dudley glared sideways at Harry, his ploy for sympathy failing. He would try a series of violent incidents over the following days, but amazingly, he still didn't get his way. That was a first.

Later on that night, when they were going their separate ways and Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon couldn't hear, Dudley muttered, "Thank that stupid teacher of yours."

"What?" said Harry, caught off guard.

"Don't you get it, moron?" Dudley scowled and headed for the staircase. "She must have pulled the gossip card and threatened to expose them. What else could get Mum and Dad to stop behaving the way they do?" He stomped up the stairs toward his bedroom.

Harry stood there by his cupboard, stunned, both by the fact that Dudley had said something intelligent… and by the fact that someone appeared to be helping him. For the first time in his living memory, someone, and perhaps it was Miss Hanzen, was on his side.

* * *

Harry had a surreal day at school the next day. He was unbothered during class, allowed to eat lunch alone unfettered and even swing on the swing set, and overall he had the most wonderful day at school he'd ever had.

No more punches. No more cupboard punishments. Not even at home. It was amazing.

At the end of the day, Miss Hanzen approached him. "Harry," she said quite kindly, "I've scheduled after-school meetings with the school counselor for you. Because of the bullying incident."

Harry was almost amused. "That's alright, Miss Hanzen, I - I think I'm fine."

Miss Hanzen frowned, concerned. "Fine or not, it's required by the school that you attend the meetings anyway, alright? The first one is tomorrow at the counseling center at 3 o'clock. Free of charge, as per usual."

Harry knew she was trying to help. She just seemed naive to him. What good would counseling do?

Then again - what would it hurt? It was better than sitting in his cupboard with his thoughts and his bizarre dreams.

"Alright," he said, both to make her feel better and to avoid getting in trouble with the headmistress and his aunt and uncle. "I'll be there."

Miss Hanzen gave an internal sigh of relief. The only way she thought she could get Harry Potter to admit to abuse was through counseling.

* * *

The counselor's name was Mrs Harkiss, and she looked like a round old grandma with a cheerful face and a perm of silver hair. She held a clipboard, and when he entered, she said, "Have a biscuit and sit right there across from me." The chairs were across the office from one another, but there was no desk between them. Fantastical travel photos lined the walls and there were framed family photographs on the desk off to the side.

Harry took a biscuit from the platter and slowly took a seat, still looking around.

"You look quite intent, Harry," said Mrs Harkiss kindly.

"Do you travel with your family?" erupted suddenly from Harry.

Mrs Harkiss blinked. "Excuse me?"

"Those are hand-made travel photographs, and the pictures on the desk bear the similarity of your relatives." Harry ducked his head. "Sorry, I shouldn't have said anything." Trust him to offend the school counselor within five minutes of their first meeting.

"No, it's alright, I was just surprised. That's very observant of you," said Mrs Harkiss, blinking. She smiled. "My children are grown, but my husband is retired and I do often travel with him. We're going to the Grand Canyon this summer."

Harry smiled back tentatively. "These are good," he said politely, holding one up.

"Thank you."

"So, er - how does this work?" said Harry nervously.

"Well, first I'd like to ask you about your family," said Mrs Harkiss, going to the clipboard. "Harry, does your cousin often bully you? Is it a relief he's no longer here?"

Harry paused.

"Everything you say is between you, me, and the wall," said Mrs Harkiss. "Unless something criminal is happening or you're about to off yourself, that's actually the law."

"I… appreciate the honesty," said Harry, surprised. He didn't think there was anything illegal happening and he wasn't planning to off himself, so he decided to speak candidly. "Alright. Well. Yes, I suppose it's a relief that he's gone. He, er - he beat me up a lot. I could never enjoy lunch or recess in peace. And he kept me from making any friends."

"Did he call you any names?"

"Just what my aunt and uncle call me."

"And what is that, exactly?"

Harry realized too late he was caught in a bind. "Well - erm - you know - freak," he muttered to the ground.

Mrs Harkiss was silent for a while.

"What is it like, Harry," she said, "living with your aunt and uncle?"

"Do you really want to know?" Harry asked.

"Yes," said Mrs Harkiss, now impossible to read. The smile was gone. "I would very much like to know."

And so Harry told her - everything. About not being allowed too much food at meals, the cupboard punishments, and all the stuff in between. About his aunt and uncle's obsession with outward appearances and their all consuming fear of gossip, their perfect dollhouse home in which there were no photographs of him. He felt nervous as he was doing it. He was afraid, not of what Mrs Harkiss would do, but about retribution or derision from his aunt and uncle.

Keeping still and silent and never asking questions kept you alive in the Dursley household, and Harry had become an expert at it. Admitting bad treatment to a psychologist did not.

"What do you want, Harry?" asked Mrs Harkiss at one point. "What is it you want most of all in the world?"

"... Friends," Harry admitted. "Things to share, people to share with. Love. Does that sound stupid?" He winced and looked up.

"All things considered, Harry," said Mrs Harkiss, "I think it's positively remarkable. You're a little survivor, aren't you?"

"I try to be, ma'am," said Harry. "Surviving is all I'm good at."

* * *

Mrs Harkiss, Miss Hanzen, and the headmistress all sat down in the headmistress's office together. The headmistress was frowning, looking unusually worried and troubled.

"What's wrong?" said Miss Hanzen immediately. "Did you report the abuse to the authorities?"

"I did," said the headmistress. "And I have something very strange to tell you. I called someone, and they said they'd get right on it. I called them again the next day, and they claimed to have no memory of our conversation taking place. Furthermore, there was no file on record of any such abuse report ever having happened."

"Do you think his aunt and uncle are paying people off?" said Mrs Harkiss seriously.

"Perhaps, but there's something stranger. I did some digging. Harry Potter is supposed to be Petunia's sister's child, yes? Well his birth documents and papers are clearly forged, upon closer inspection. All evidence of Harry Potter existing before his aunt and uncle claimed hold over him are false."

"It's true he looks nothing like them," said Miss Hanzen, her mind spinning. "Could it be a trafficking case?"

"There's one more thing you should know." The headmistress frowned. "Harry Potter has government report paperwork attached to his name. But it's all sealed, blacked out. Only someone with high clearance can read it."

"What does he know about his parents?" said Miss Hanzen quickly, turning to Mrs Harkiss.

"She can't say -" the headmistress began, but Mrs Harkiss was silently shaking her head.

" _Nothing_?" said Miss Hanzen disbelievingly. Mrs Harkiss nodded and shrugged.

"The government is involved. They want Harry Potter with the Dursleys, to the point of blacking out every abuse report that is filed in his name," said the headmistress solemnly. "I don't know who he is or where he comes from, but one thing has become absolutely certain - he cannot leave. And I doubt he understands anything about why."

"We probably shouldn't bring it up," said Mrs Harkiss, troubled. "It would either confuse him, upset him, or both."

"So how are we supposed to help him?" Miss Hanzen asked disbelievingly.

"... By getting creative," said Mrs Harkiss in realization, determination forming over her face. She turned to Miss Hanzen. "And you're going to help me."

Miss Hanzen and the headmistress raised their eyebrows curiously.

* * *

"Harry," said Mrs Harkiss at their next meeting, "without going into too much detail, there are legal reasons why you can't leave your aunt and uncle's house."

She braced herself but he seemed unsurprised. "I expected that," he said with acceptance.

"So I am going to help you in a different way. Tell your aunt and uncle I want a meeting. Nothing you said will be discussed," she added, when Harry looked worried. "I'd like to speak to them about something quite different."

Her eyes gleamed.

* * *

"Thank you for the meeting, Mr and Mrs Dursley," she said politely, as they sat down across from her in her office.

"I'm sorry you have to put up with him," said Mrs Dursley immediately. "He's a troubled boy."

Mrs Harkiss was silent for a moment. "Can I speak with you frankly?" she asked. They looked hesitant, nervous. "You seem like the sort of people who care a great deal about how you come across. Right now, your nephew is interfering with this."

"That's right!" said Mr Dursley, looking enormously relieved that someone at last understood.

"Well I can fix that," Mrs Harkiss promised. "I can make him into the sort of orphaned nephew you may be proud to show off. Be warned - my methods will be unconventional. But I know what people like, as a psychologist, and I promise I can make your nephew into the kind of person people will be impressed by.

"I need two things from you - your permission to let Harry participate in after school hobbies and sports, and you may have to buy him new clothes. As I'm sure you know better than anyone, he has to have the right things to brag about and the right way to look.

"I may be leading him toward more youthful hobbies and looks than you're used to, but that will be positive in the long run. He'll look like a respectable young man of his own generation. More authentic.

"You will not have to be involved at all. I have an assistant who will be willing to help me to give your nephew a makeover, so to speak." She was thinking of Miss Hanzen, but decided not to mention that because they may already be suspicious of Miss Hanzen.

Vernon Dursley's tiny dark eyes watched Mrs Harkiss cannily for a moment, but Mrs Harkiss was a psychologist and an expert at putting up a polite, distant front. She gave a bland, cold smile.

"Very well," said Mr Dursley. "You know best. God knows the boy needs help."

"We'll trust your discretion," said Mrs Dursley.

"Excellent," said Mrs Harkiss. She wasn't sure how to bring up the cupboard bedroom, the chores, or the verbal abuse without getting Harry in trouble or seeming over-the-top and losing the Dursleys' trust. But many other things, she could help with.

She now had free reign in making Harry Potter's life considerably more pleasant. Miss Hanzen had gotten him no cupboard punishments and no physical abuse. Now the next step was making Harry a more functional human being who understood himself better, had wider friends and interests, and hopefully eventually had more food and better exercise. His look could use some updating, too.

She marched down the hall next to Miss Hanzen at the end of the day. "Let's get all this set in motion," she said firmly. "We have work to do."

Her job was making Harry Potter's life as livable as possible. With a flair for spy dramas, she privately called it Operation Makeover.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

"Harry, I think you deserve to know what I talked with your aunt and uncle about after our last meeting," said Mrs Harkiss in her office at the start of their next meeting.

"I - was curious, ma'am," Harry admitted.

"They are to allow you hobbies and new clothes." Harry's eyes widened in stunned disbelief. "I made the argument that I would help you look more presentable - thus making them and their family look better - but I needed their total cooperation."

"Brilliant, ma'am!" said Harry, a great smile coming over his face.

Mrs Harkiss smiled. "Thank you, Harry. Miss Hanzen, your instructor, and I are here to help you learn more about yourself and improve your life. And hopefully, you'll have a good time doing it.

"But there is something we need to deal with first."

"What is it?" said Harry, puzzled.

"Harry, are you aware that the way your family treats you is wrong?" said Mrs Harkiss thoughtfully.

"They're not my family," said Harry darkly. "And yes. I am."

"... Let me put it to you this way. I said I could not tell anyone what was going with you on unless it was illegal."

"... Yeah." Harry was staring at her, lost.

"Were you not aware that your aunt and uncle's behavior toward you is illegal?" Mrs Harkiss kept up her professional, polite tone, but her eyes were watchful.

Harry stared at her for a moment, and then he actually laughed. "What, so it's illegal to be an asshole, is it?" he asked disbelievingly. The idea of the rule abiding, tradition loving Dursleys ever breaking the law seemed absurd to him.

"Harry, the way they behave toward you is abusive."

Harry's laughter stopped very quickly.

"Let me explain to you what I mean," said Mrs Harkiss calmly. "They belittle you and call you names. They neglect you and imply you cost too much to keep around. They assign you far too much work without even the benefit of allowance or gifts. They give you your cousin's old clothes, and poor haircuts and glasses, in an effort to keep you feeling badly about yourself. They don't feed you enough, and sometimes not at all. They lock you into a tiny dark cupboard with dangerous spiders. You don't have a proper bedroom. You never feel loved or cared for. You're not allowed to ask questions. You're not allowed to show imagination. You know nothing about your past. You're punished severely over things that aren't your fault. You are grabbed, shaken, threatened, and slapped.

"Shall I go on?"

Harry's eyes were wide and his face was rather pale.

"And that's just your aunt and uncle," said Mrs Harkiss. "Dudley is much more overt. Some people don't realize that in addition to parental abuse, there is something called sibling abuse. It usually occurs in dysfunctional households, households where parental abuse is already present. In other words, Dudley learns from his parents' example.

"And judging from the way Dudley has regularly beaten you up and called you names, isolating you from everyone else, I can assume you at least agree that counts as sibling abuse?"

Harry nodded slowly, still silent and stunned.

"There is also the qualification, under most definitions, that allowing someone to be abused makes you complicit in the abuse. It is itself its own kind of abuse, a kind that scars the entire family. So even if your aunt and uncle did nothing to you themselves, just by allowing Dudley to beat you up they would be considered abusive."

"But - but I'm not some poor sobbing victim!" Harry protested, flushing. "I'm not!"

"No one accused you of acting like a victim of anything, Harry. Plenty of people who have been abused choose not to let that experience affect or define how they treat others," said Mrs Harkiss. "But you do hold many of the hallmark signs. You don't seem to think very highly of yourself, for example, and you are passive, observant, cautious, and quiet essentially all the time, with hair trigger reflexes - like you're ready for someone to attack you at any moment."

Harry was sitting there, his mind spinning. "So you're saying - that the reason why I don't like myself is because of the Dursleys?"

"That is correct," said Mrs Harkiss sympathetically.

"... Damn them," said Harry lowly. Then, in a fit of anger, he kicked outward. "Damn them! And I just go along with them!"

"In an effort to survive, Harry," said Mrs Harkiss. "It is impossible to remain unaffected by abuse."

"But - to just allow them to control my thoughts and actions like that -" Harry seemed to be struggling with a fit of deep fury.

"This is perhaps a healthier reaction than your passivity of before," Mrs Harkiss recommended. "But do not go trying to confront your abusers, Harry. They still hold power over you, and they're much bigger than you are."

"If they're abusive, why can't I leave?" Harry asked intently.

"There are legal reasons why you must stay," said Mrs Harkiss. "I'm sorry, we at the school filed a report, but the decision is out of our hands."

Harry was silent for a long time, and despite herself, Mrs Harkiss didn't think she'd ever felt for a patient so keenly. He knew what he was going through was wrong - and he had to live through it anyway.

* * *

Harry struggled with deep anger and despair over the next several days. He felt suddenly, irreparably damaged - he lived in a toxic situation and must continue to try to survive locked away in there.

He hated the Dursleys, he realized. He hated his relatives. Before it had been almost a joke when he'd thought that - now it was serious.

Everything they did was suddenly thrown into sharp relief. Every snide comment grated, every command burned, every time he got dressed in poor clothing, or went to sleep in his cupboard, or got a new spider bite - every time, it ate away at him.

It started to show, too. He snapped and snarled, glared and gritted his teeth. His aunt and uncle began calling him an upstart.

"I'm not sure if this counseling is entirely good for you," his aunt said at last suspiciously one day, and Harry very nearly openly panicked. He knew he had to do something.

Mrs Harkiss recommended that he use a distancing technique to control his emotions. "Look at each situation as something you must survive, as a strategy exercise," she said. "This will help you gain control over your emotions, with the added benefit that you use your head more and don't show emotion too much. Use your brain. Trick them. It will give you a sense of power you did not before have."

"I would have said I'm not particularly intelligent," Harry commented. "But you think it's the Dursleys telling me that?"

"Definitely," said Mrs Harkiss firmly, nodding.

So the next time Uncle Vernon confronted him over his previous anger, Harry decided to use her new technique. "You've seemed particularly ungrateful lately, boy," he thundered, looming over Harry. "Is there something you'd like to say for yourself?"

Harry began to feel fury - and then he retreated into his mind. He calculated. If one looked at this as a survival training exercise, how would one think their way out of this?

Slowly, he calmed down. Tried to think like Mrs Harkiss. He knew the Dursleys, after all, he'd grown up around them. And if he was right, this would have to be played very carefully.

"I'm sorry." It was a hard pill to swallow, but he shoved down his pride and forced himself to say it. "Mrs Harkiss has been showing me how ungrateful I am, and I've been struggling to accept it. I think I have. I'd like to apologize for my previous actions. My anger was something I had to overcome."

He said it calmly, almost clinically. It was a lie, but lies did not come entirely unnaturally to Harry Potter.

"Well," said Uncle Vernon deflating, "good. See you remain that way!" he barked.

"Yes, Uncle Vernon," said Harry simply.

Harry Potter's life with his family became defined in his own mind as something to survive. If one let go of anger and accepted, he learned, one could stop letting anger cloud their judgment - and could instead survive much better than they would have otherwise.

Perhaps he wasn't entirely unintelligent. Perhaps, like Mrs Harkiss, he could manipulate his relatives to avoid the brunt of their abuse.

Without entirely realizing it, Harry began to treat many things in life as lessons in strategy and psychology.

* * *

"I know I need to work on how the Dursleys have gotten me to see myself," Harry admitted to Mrs Harkiss at one session. "But I don't know how. I've tried to think of what hobbies I'd want to do or how I'd want to dress… But I've realized I don't really know anything about myself.

"I need help." He pushed down his pride again, once more forcing himself to say the words.

"That's what I'm here for, Harry," said Mrs Harkiss. "I'm going to help you change your own life. I'm not going to do the work for you, but I'll help you get there. Would that be alright with you?"

"Yes," said Harry, straightening. He was excited and nervous, an unfamiliar but entirely welcome feeling.

"Very well. Let's start with something you said earlier. That you don't see yourself as particularly intelligent," said Mrs Harkiss.

"I've been talking my way around the Dursleys a lot lately," Harry admitted. "So maybe that's not quite true."

"That's good, because you're correct, it's not true. But what made you think it was in the first place?" Mrs Harkiss sat there with her clipboard thoughtfully.

Harry sat there for a minute. "I don't know," he said slowly. "I just… Intelligent people are A students. You know. I'm not stupid, it's just… I've never seen myself as particularly clever."

"Would you like to see yourself as cleverer? Would getting As help you achieve that? Those are extraordinarily high self-standards, Harry, but if they incentivize you to work harder, high self-standards do not necessarily have to be a bad thing," said Mrs Harkiss. "Just as long as you remember that getting a B on something does not make you an idiot. Bs are quite good grades.

"At this point, where he is, I'm sure your cousin would kill to have a B grade," Mrs Harkiss added dryly, and Harry snorted.

"Fair point," he said. "As for your questions… Yeah, now that Dudley's gone and we're not being compared anymore, I - I guess I'd like to do better in school." Harry seemed thoughtful, like he'd never really considered it before.

"Miss Hanzen can teach you good study habits, if you would like. A lot of it comes down to hard work," said Mrs Harkiss. "Would you like me to recommend that to her? It would be a good start in helping you overcome the idea that you are somehow unintelligent."

"... Yeah, tell her," said Harry, growing more confident. "Tell her I'd like to be an A student."

* * *

Miss Hanzen agreed to meet with Harry at her desk after school the next day.

"So," she said. "You'd like to learn better study habits. Your study habits must already be pretty fair, Harry."

"I'd like to do better," said Harry, determined.

"Very well. In going from a B to an A, it's really important to focus on reading and memorization techniques, as well as critical thinking and analytical skills," said Miss Hanzen, as they sat down across from each other. "So I will go through your assignments with you, and teach you how you can go the extra mile from a B to an A on individual assignments."

And so they began. Miss Hanzen was essentially a private tutor - she worked with Harry tirelessly on homework assignment after homework assignment, and Harry found that he understood things better than he'd expected he would. Once Miss Hanzen expanded his mind, getting him to think of things he'd never considered before, his critical thinking and analytical skills became better. For the first time, someone taught him how to ask the right questions.

And with none of his relatives left at school, he could ask all the questions there that he wanted - either in class or in his writing - and begin to explore the answers.

Reading and memorization techniques were even simpler. Either you knew them or you didn't. Harry had always just kind of assumed that the people who seemed to know everything spent all their time reading in close detail and were just naturally really brilliant and able to remember it all.

This was not the case, as it turned out, at all.

There were certain techniques one could use - skimming, learning to pick out buzz words and vocab, and repeating and using that vocab in different situations until you had it memorized. They could all be used to make a person seem naturally brilliant. In reality, it required a lot of hard work bent over books, but not in the way Harry had assumed. Before, he'd just kept swimming through reading and felt extraordinarily hopeless. Now, he skimmed over reading, picking out buzz words and vocab and then doing different memorization exercises silently in his head to help him memorize better what he was learning. Suddenly, he could do more and remember better in shorter periods of time.

Where this all came together was in essays.

Essays, Harry learned, and reports and other such things, were not simple dumps of information. They combined all these skills together into one skill set. The well written essay included memorized data and thought out answers to original questions, all coming together into one amalgamation that had to fit a certain word or page count.

"In other words," said Miss Hanzen, "make up questions, and then then use the information you've memorized to answer those questions. And you've got a good essay. That's all big projects and essays are. Make up a question; answer it in detail using the information you've learned. That applies to assignments, essays, all of it.

"We as teachers are looking for you to critically and creatively show us what you have learned."

So in the end, it wasn't that Harry put more study time in. It was that he did more with the time he was allotted, working hard and going that extra mile to get the A. This, he realized, was easier than he thought it would be.

Miss Hanzen and Mrs Harkiss began calling him "naturally brilliant." He would blush and protest this title, thinking they were just saying it to make him feel better about himself, until finally Mrs Harkiss went through entire sessions teaching him how to gracefully accept compliments.

"A truly confident person can simply thank someone for a compliment, and move on as though nothing has happened," she said. "You shouldn't look for other people to validate your own intelligence - whether they're being sincere or not."

One thing Harry found to his surprise that he was very good at and interested in? Math and science.

Harry began reading scientific texts from the local library. The Dursleys couldn't protest, because they weren't fanciful and imaginative. Dudley made fun of him, and Uncle Vernon sometimes joined in, but Harry thought they were interesting. He enjoyed analyzing what made things work the way they did, and found he had a surprising affinity for the sciences and mathematics.

When he thought about it, that could explain his reactions toward the strange things that happened to him. It was an attempt by him to make sense and order out of chaos - like a scientist. An attempt to explain what on the surface seemed fundamentally inexplicable.

So while his marks began shooting up in all of his classes, he took special care with math and science.

Soon, no longer encumbered by Dudley and his gang, other students began approaching him for help with their math and science homework. Harry openly and gladly assisted, and in the process he became friends with many new people. Even in PE, he was picked much quicker than he used to be in any sport involving balance or speed.

So Harry was small but fast, and good at math and science. He had two things going for him already.

Rarely interacting with his relatives anymore except for dinners and chores, Harry found he was slowly starting to feel better about himself. He made friends who sent him summer letters, and was quite happy.

* * *

"We've improved your grades, self esteem, and social life," said Mrs Harkiss. "Now we get into things like hobbies and fashion. The easiest way you get to know yourself better, Harry, is through things like this." She held up vast sheets of paper. "Personality psychology tests I can offer you. You take this, and I'll be able to tell you a lot of things about yourself that will seem obvious once they're explained using words."

So Harry agreed to take the test. It was very long. He got to the end, his score was tallied up, and Mrs Harkiss gave him his results.

"You are what's called an ISFP," she said. "SPs are grounded in reality, but need lots of spontaneity and freedom to move around in. That could be the arts, or a sport, or teaching, or the design or decision aspects of business, or - since you're interested in science - scientific research. But while you'd be excellent at teaching or researching science, the more paperwork aspects of science would not interest you. Neither would any kind of bureaucracy.

"You need to have free actions and be rewarded for doing them. That's the key. You're spontaneous, impulsive, if in a quiet, personal way. And I have noticed that although you are unusually clean for a young boy, Harry, you are also unusually messy - clean in the sense of being hygienic, messy in the sense of having stuff strewn everywhere. No doubt a combination of your super clean aunt and your own natural personality. You're creative and spontaneous, and you need room to move around and create in.

"I stands for introvert. This means that lots of social interaction tends to make you tired. You need alone time to recharge. In fact, ISFPs are not great writers or talkers. You tend to be quite reserved, not overly aggressive, and that can be of benefit, as you've seen acting calmer with your family. Your politeness and strategic quiet do you well. But ISFPs do not write or talk well. No, where you excel in, is the arts.

"Any kind of art will do: be it cooking and gardening, the fine or performance arts, sports, purchasing or design, the more wheel and deal aspects of business, anything the next move of which is a free variable. This is how you express yourself. You need to find a way to express yourself not involving words, something that gives you freedom, and then cling to that thing as that which gives your life meaning.

"ISFPs in particular are excellent with the senses. They're finely attuned to sensory variation: the slightest nuances in sight, taste, touch, smell, and sound are obvious to them.

"ISFPs are also unusually kind. They tend to love children, animals, and nature, and are quite generous and naturally healing. They can do well with animals, in the outdoors, or in nursing or being a doctor.

"So we'll focus on those things to form the basis for some things you might like to try. You're small, light, graceful, and fast, so we could try you in a sport like that. You could get involved more in nature. And you could choose something sensory to get involved in. Cooking, for example, is something you already do that you could become much better at.

"That way, not only would you have math and science, but you would have cooking, nature, and some fast sport or another. Nice ways to express yourself and connect with your innate kindness.

"I also want Miss Hanzen to take you shopping. I insist your aunt and uncle consistently try their hardest to make you look poorly, and I intend to prove it," said Mrs Harkiss firmly.

* * *

Harry found he genuinely enjoyed cooking once he started buying cookbooks and seeing it as an art instead of a chore. He started relying more on his senses, on aroma and taste, and he started being more strategic and innovating more with what he was doing. Trying things out, seeing what worked and what didn't.

It gave him more courage to be himself.

Harry found he liked hearty dinners filled with meat and potatoes, and he had a gigantic sweet tooth - chocolate was the best, but caramel and toffee were excellent as well. He tried crafting amazing culinary masterpieces, from stews to French cuisine desserts, and his relatives didn't complain because they got to eat what he made and he always filled them up. Uncle Vernon affirmed that he was "at last showing his gratefulness for the blessings they had given him."

"What is with this new obsession with cooking?" Aunt Petunia asked suspiciously once.

"It's one of my new accomplishments," said Harry simply, quiet. He felt he had more room to be confident and quiet now than he used to be. He had accepted himself as a contradiction - kind but quiet, messy but clean. He even felt he was interacting more naturally with others than he used to be.

He also put all of his artistic perfectionism into each culinary masterpiece. He found he was more careful, creative, and tireless than he thought he was, living gracefully in each moment, once he started trying it. Creating things became fun to him. Science and art came together in cooking and baking, and his relatives forced him to time himself - he couldn't spend all day on a single project.

For this reason, he rapidly improved.

But Miss Hanzen also took him, with his aunt and uncle's reluctant blessing, shopping for a new look. Harry was skeptical.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

They walked through the mall, Harry staring around himself in fascination. Several indoor floors of vast, gleaming shop windows, holding all manner of wonders. Miss Hanzen had already bought him a snack and several chocolates, but now they got to the real meat of the thing: the shopping.

"I'm really going to get to buy things in here?" said Harry in quiet wonder, hyper aware of the money heavy in his pockets.

"Many of them," said Miss Hanzen, smiling. "And I used to work in beauty care and cosmetics before I got my teaching credentials, so I'm the perfect person to show you around.

"Now. You claim you're not attractive, Harry, but I beg to differ. For a young man, you are very handsome. And I can see that contemptuous, skeptical look; no, it's not just because I like you. You have all the right traits for what's attractive in the modern age.

"First, your slim form. That's very in vogue right now. Most designer clothes are tailored for smaller, slimmer body types. And yes, you're fairly uniform up and down, but really there are ways around that. It's all about dressing in a way that makes you look less like a stick.

"Second, your complexion. You have clear pale skin, black hair, and rather stunning green eyes; you're a clear Winter. Complexions are divided into the four seasons, and your season is winter. This is very desirable. You get to wear very vivid colors, and you are also the complexion that looks best in black.

"So you can see, I imagine, the biggest problems with your clothes right off the bat. None of them are for your complexion or your body type. Dressing a Winter in shabby, faded old clothes is the quickest way to make them look feeble and washed out, while clothes for Dudley's body style just make you look - well, like a stick.

"This is the essence of fashion. Finding what looks best on each individual person, based on their characteristics. Get it? What looks great on one person might look awful on another.

"Lastly, there is your face shape. You have a thin, diamond-shaped face. And your current haircut emphasizes all the wrong portions of your face, making it look even thinner and more angular than it already does. There are haircuts that look very well on diamond shaped faces; that's not one of them. Your glasses are all wrong, too - tiny and round, no good for a diamond.

"So - we need a new haircut, new glasses, and a new wardrobe. Are you still with me?"

"Yes," said Harry, who was already practicing memorization techniques to remember all of it. "I am. Winter coloring, slim body that's uniform up and down, diamond face shape. But I'll believe it when I look better, no offense."

"Just what I would expect from a scientist," said Miss Hanzen, nodding and straightening. Harry smiled. "But I hope you'll let out the artistic part of you, too, Harry. It's very important when it comes to fashion."

Color and shade, Harry learned he was excellent at. He was, as Miss Hanzen pointed out, an easy expert in shade, texture, material, and coloring, just as Mrs Harkiss had promised. He loved soft velvets and silks and rich, royal colors - not only black, but icy blue, royal blue, icy green, emerald green, true red, bright burgundy, icy violet, and royal purple. He also liked shiny, sparkly things, which Miss Hanzen promised was another hallmark of being a Winter, along with silver metals. He absolutely refused to wear any shade of pink, orange, or yellow. Bright colors in general were not his thing.

In clothing style, said Miss Hanzen, "It's important to make your top look toned. Not huge, but toned." Sweaters layered over collared shirts and casual jackets were his best friends. He then chose skinnier jeans. (Luckily Winters could wear navy, and black was another popular jeans color.) Everything was slim fit, with narrowed sleeves and pant legs. Usually what he did was wear a pair of black or navy skinny jeans, a black jacket, and then the sweater and collared shirt would be more vividly Winter colored.

In haircuts, Miss Hanzen recommended he go with the mess instead of against it. "Messy is in," she said. "Your biggest mistake is in trying to tame your hair."

"My aunt and uncle won't like it," Harry warned.

"They will once they see it makes you look good," she promised.

They chose a longer layered haircut, full of soft lines, one that tucked behind the ears and had a side sweep, with side swept bangs and a deep side part. The layers and longer side sweep went with the mess, and sure enough, it changed the whole curvature of his face.

"You have excellent bone structure and nice, delicate features," said the hairdresser as they cut. "Wasting it away on your previous haircut really is tragic. You have the androgynous look; that's very in right now."

"... Can you keep the bangs a little light and feathery?" Harry requested. "I like my scar." He smiled, fingering the lightning bolt. "I think it makes me look cool, and it reminds me of my parents."

"Done, and done," said the hairdresser, smiling back.

Harry had seen the light. This really was incredible, and he'd learned already to visualize based on body build, look for the right color shades, and look for haircuts in magazines that fit his facial shape. An ISFP to the end, he found the same joy in finding what was just right in shopping as he did in finding just the right taste when cooking and baking. He could work tirelessly until he found just the right thing. And in the end, in both cases, he got something: either a good outfit, or a tasty meal.

Harry hadn't known what to do with his life, and now he already had three options: As a purchaser for clothing stores, as a chef going to culinary school, or as a scientific professor or researcher.

Last, but not least, came the new glasses.

Harry chose semi rimless glasses, that took attention away from his eyeline and didn't make his eyes look narrower. (This was especially important for Harry, because his eyes were almond shaped.) With black framing the top half of his glasses, his eyebrows were more emphasized and his green eyes - which Miss Hanzen insisted were his best feature - were on better display, with nice bold black frames bordered above them and everything de emphasized and almost invisible below them. He chose nice glasses that bordered between square and oval, much more mature than his previous set he felt.

He looked in the mirror, and he felt - attractive. For the first time, in addition to being smart or kind, he was attractive.

He was still kind of small and skinny. "The skinny part, you can work on with sports," Miss Hanzen reminded him. And otherwise, he really did look completely transformed.

"... Thank you, Miss Hanzen," he said quietly.

* * *

He came home and his aunt and uncle were silent with horror for a moment.

"You - you look -" his uncle forced out, reddening.

"I know it's unconventional," said Harry, raising his hands. "But everyone insists this is what's in. And isn't it more important what other people think? It's not like I came home wearing a skirt. I look much smarter like this."

"If you ever come home wearing a skirt, I'm disowning you," said Uncle Vernon, his eyes narrowing.

Harry bit back his initial, cold response, which was, _Wow. That would be tragic._

Later, Aunt Petunia glared sideways at him. "You're not handsomer than my Duddy," she bit out, resentful.

Harry was surprised and confused. "I never said I was," he pointed out.

"Well." She huffed. "Just don't get any funny ideas."

Dudley had never shown any interest in being like Harry. In fact, he made fun of him a lot, calling him "nerd" and "pansy."

So why would Aunt Petunia assume her son might be jealous of her nephew?

* * *

The night before Harry had his first hike with the nature club, he dreamed of gently slopping water and dim, shadowy green and silver lighting. Then the dream transformed into warmth and golden light and the smell of earth. He woke up feeling comforted, but very confused.

Nature club had been Mrs Harkiss's recommendation. "You should connect with the great outdoors," she had said, so Harry had decided he was going to try it. He had always been rather fond of the change of seasons and the pastoral.

Perhaps he would like the nature club.

So after school, he met in the empty classroom with all the other nature club students. He knew one or two, and talked with them for a while. Everyone had been quite impressed by his new look, and they seemed surprised and pleased by his taking an interest in a club. Harry registered that it probably seemed social. Normal.

The teacher, Mr Krainer, a tall, thin, balding man, entered. "Alright, students, listen up!" He clapped his hands. "There are some rules I want to remind everybody of before we go out hiking!"

He went through several survival skills, from surviving snake bites to wearing comfortable shoes and carrying water. Then he called, "Everyone out to the bus!"

They were taking a school bus to the hiking trail.

Harry took a window seat and watched the city pass by him out the window, talking here and there to someone occasionally. They parked at the small parking lot connected to the hiking trail, and set off in a group up the steep dirt incline. Trees and greenery lined either side, and Harry watched the plant and animal life, interested.

"What are you looking at?" one girl asked him at last.

In answer, Harry pointed. "Grey squirrel. Blue jay. There are a bunch of ladybugs on that leaf over there."

The girl leaned forward and squinted. "Wow, I didn't notice any of it!" she said, impressed.

Harry saw a flash of brown on the ground and then a bush shook. "There was a field mouse over there but it's gone now," he said observationally.

So he walked along, examining the different trees for similarities, pointing things out to people every so often. But he kept hearing whispers. It was very strange. He looked around countless times, but there was nobody whispering. Especially in such soft, hissing tones.

Then he looked down at the ground, and saw a green garden snake curled up there, on a rock by a bush. It opened its mouth. " _Speaker_ …" it whispered in a hiss.

Oh great. Another weird thing that couldn't be explained. It was a good thing his relatives weren't here.

Harry fell behind the group, and knelt down beside the snake. Somehow, he knew intuitively that it would not harm him. "Can you understand me, too?" he asked.

" _Of course. You are a Speaker_ ," said the snake, as though it were patently obvious.

There were more hisses of greeting along the hiking trail. All the snakes on this stretch of road were saying hello to him.

"Can I talk to all animals," Harry asked, "or just snakes?"

" _Speakers_ _can only speak to snakes_ ," said the green snake, nodding its head.

Harry stood. "Thanks," he said. "I just saw a field mouse over there." He pointed, offering something in return for the information.

" _Ooh_ …" And the snake began to slither off.

"You know, this could all be a hallucination," Harry called after the snake.

There were hisses of laughter from within the trees. " _You just keep telling yourself that, Speaker_ ," the snake called in amusement behind itself. Harry stared after it in consternation.

"Harry! What are you doing?" Harry turned around to find Mr Krainer there, frowning at him in worry.

"There as a snake," said Harry, pointing stupidly. "I wanted to see it."

"For goodness sake, Harry, you could have been bitten!" Mr Krainer put an arm over his tiny, thin shoulders and led him away. "Please don't go wandering off like that again!"

Harry didn't know how to tell Mr Krainer that he might be the only one on this hiking trail who _didn't_ have to worry about being bitten.

He began going on hikes with the nature club regularly, and he walked as a sort of guard between his fellow students and any nearby hissing noises. The least he could do, he thought, was make sure his fellow classmates didn't get killed by a rogue snake. It wasn't like any of them had done anything wrong.

* * *

Harry showed up at the animal shelter doorstep, guarded and uncertain.

"Yes?" said the scowling, heavyset lady at the desk, looking up. "Can I help you with something?"

"I, er - sent in the application," said Harry, expressionless.

"Ah, yes. Harry Potter." The animal shelter worker looked him over. "Well, you're younger than we're used to, but it is just volunteer work. Let me take you into the back and introduce you to what you'll be doing."

Harry was led into the back, which was a long hallway full of kennels containing cats and dogs. It smelled funny and there was an awful racket.

"You'll be feeding them and cleaning their cages," said the woman brusquely. "I'll show you today how to do what, and afterward, when you come in, you'll do it for me."

Harry found to his surprise that he enjoyed working with the animals. He got to know each one's unique personality, talking to them like they were people, petting their fur. He memorized what kind of food each animal liked, and talked to each as he coaxed them gently out of their kennel so he could wash it. Cleaning, he found, gave him some comfort about a bit of calm amid the chaos.

He sometimes performed first aid on an animal that injured itself by surprise, and found himself capable of a surprising kindness he hadn't known he had. Where he'd gotten it from, he didn't know. It wasn't like the Dursleys had ever treated him gently or lovingly.

He wondered, sometimes, if he'd gotten it from the parents he didn't remember.

Harry found he was as good a friend as he was an animal caretaker. He grew more confident in his ability to love and care for others. Kindness, he found, was in itself fulfilling. He added veterinarian, doctor, or nurse to the list of potential jobs he would be good at.

So far, researcher, doctor, and teacher were tied for him.

* * *

The first two sports he tried were track, and football (soccer).

He had to audition for each. The track test was fairly simple. He had to run really fast, jumping over a series of hurdles to get to his final destination. When he'd finished, breathing hard, the track coach stopped his stopwatch and stared at it.

"That's the fastest time I've seen in six years," he said disbelievingly.

Harry shrugged. _Thank my cousin_ , he thought dryly. If there was one thing he was good at, it was speed.

The football coach tried him in a number of different positions, but found him best in offense. Harry was good at ducking and dodging around people for the ball, moving at high speeds so that others fell behind him, and he had good enough aim to be able to kick the ball into the net.

"You're also merciless," the coach commented, "which can be of great benefit in a sport."

It was true Harry would stop at nothing in his efforts to win. He found he was capable of training for countless hours in both sports, oblivious to fatigue. He was also good at bending the rules - not quite cheating, but doing things that were not strictly honorable to win a game. He was crafty.

The word "merciless" suited him when it came to sports, and that began to leak over into his attitude toward grades and achievements as well. He was put into games immediately, so his coaches must have thought he was doing something right.

The first time he went to a football game or track meet, Harry looked into the stands - reflexively, mostly out of dead nausea and nervousness about screwing up majorly in his first big game. He knew the Dursleys wouldn't be there, but was still somehow disappointed when they weren't. He told himself to forget about it.

And therefore, when he won after a hard fought game or race, he allowed himself to cheer with his teammates - he allowed himself to celebrate.

It had to happen eventually one day. He overheated and passed out right there on the field - during training, Harry was thankful, _not_ a game. His coach and teammates gathered around him, and his head hazy, Harry managed, "I haven't eaten since yesterday afternoon… I wasn't allowed dinner last night…"

His coach's face darkened.

Harry was taken to the school infirmary, his aunt and uncle were called in, and his coach went out to meet them before Harry could stop him. There was shouting out in the hall for a while, and then for some reason after that Harry was allowed full meals three times a day.

"Did you know that would happen when you suggested a sport?" Harry asked Mrs Harkiss suspiciously.

"I had an idea," said Mrs Harkiss simply.

Harry smirked. "Brilliant as always," he admitted. Mrs Harkiss looked rather flattered.

Harry began to slowly build up muscle mass, gaining a lithe, wiry form. He was still small and slim, but he didn't look so skinny, bony, all-knees-and-elbows anymore. His transformation was thus complete.

* * *

Harry should probably have left it there. Math homework and scientific reading, volunteer work at an animal shelter once a week, weekend hikes, two after-school sports, and cooking meals for his family - quite a full schedule.

But he still had two days of the week free after school, and he had to spend those around his relatives - which was deeply unpleasant - or else risk wandering the streets or whining at one of his friends to let him spend the day at their house - equally unpleasant.

Wanting to keep out of the house as much as possible, he asked Mrs Harkiss what else she had to recommend to him.

"You are small, light, graceful, and fast," she said. "We already covered that. You have so far chosen to go to stereotypically masculine sports to fulfill that talent. There's nothing wrong with stereotypically masculine sports, but Harry… how would you like to piss off your uncle? Tell him you need a new hobby but not tell him what it is until it's too late?"

Harry grinned. "You've sold me already," he said softly.

* * *

He chose modern dance and figure skating. It was mostly a joke. He expected to be rubbish at both hobbies.

To his surprise, he wasn't.

He went out onto the ice and the instructor said, "Now, most people start out clinging to the side -" She stopped in surprise.

Harry, with no previous skating experience, had just glided out into the middle of the rink smoothly like he'd been doing it for a hundred years. The instructor stared. Then she began asking Harry to mimic her. He did, and found he had an incredible natural talent at skating that no one had anticipated. He knew just what to do. Moves came easily to him.

"You're sure you've never done this before?" said the instructor.

"Positive," said Harry, shrugging.

He found it relaxing, losing himself in movements, swirls, and glides. He had the same unexpected affinity with modern, choreographed dancing. He was good at back and forth, at graceful, fast movements. He'd expected to feel stupid - and he didn't.

He was put in couple skating with others, at the front of dance groups - blessed with natural talent and working tirelessly, Harry became a quiet leader with others. He felt, if possible, even more nervous before a performance requiring grace.

But the great thing about being an SP was that he got out there and started moving - and immediately, he forgot it all.

* * *

He came home from school one afternoon, and his uncle was holding up his skates, face thunderous. Harry paused. He was caught completely off guard, but he should have known - he'd had a dream last night of ice skates cutting into his hands, one of his symbolic prescient dreams that made the most sense.

"How have you been getting to these lessons?" Uncle Vernon demanded.

"... Bus," Harry admitted. "I put the skates in my book bag. I told you it was a hobby. I never told you what the hobby was -"

"Silence!" Uncle Vernon thundered. Dudley was snickering unhelpfully in a corner. "I've put up with everything - the fag clothes, the ridiculous goddamn haircut, the girlish cooking, the hippie nature hikes, the sports, everything, but _this_ -!"

"Vernon," Aunt Petunia tried to stop him worriedly from behind, but Uncle Vernon hadn't finished.

"I'm not having my nephew twirling around like some fucking fairy!" he finished. Harry recognized too late the smell of brandy wafting from him.

Harry thought fast, calculating. "Alright," he said at last. "I won't do it anymore. Give those back, and next week you can drive me to the rink and watch me hand them in. Deal?" His face was carefully expressionless.

He would have to manipulate this expertly.

"... Fine," said Uncle Vernon, slowly and suspiciously, handing back the skates.

"Now, how shall I prepare for tomorrow night's dinner party with your client?" Harry asked politely.

* * *

They had dinner the next night and everything was going well. Harry was dressed nicely, polite and well behaved. One thing his aunt and uncle could say - he felt more powerful himself and odd things hardly ever happened around him anymore.

Then the client's wife asked him politely about his hobbies, and he decided to go off script.

"Well," he said, pretending to think, "I enjoy cooking meals for my family, giving back what I've been given. It's so important that I do things for them, you know, after all they've done for me. I go on hikes, do track and football, and I also volunteer at an animal shelter. I hate seeing injured animals and I believe each one deserves a good home."

They were eating it up, looking adoring and impressed. Harry decided to add the finishing touch.

"Oh, and I also do dancing and ice skating. A bit unexpected for a boy, I suppose, but I don't believe you have to be a girl to enjoy the higher arts and I really enjoy them."

It was a risk. Uncle Vernon had stiffened at the last part, but the client's wife's eyes were moist and adoring. "Oh, that's wonderful!" she exclaimed. "I love dance and the ballet! Mr Dursley, you _will_ keep funding this boy's dreams, won't you? We need more like him."

She turned to Uncle Vernon, who was glaring hard at Harry. Harry offered a polite smile, hiding the devious smirk within.

"Yes," Uncle Vernon at last forced out. "Yes, we most certainly will."

Uncle Vernon made the deal easily after that, and when they'd shut the door behind the clients and turned to look at Harry, Uncle Vernon seemed calculating as he would be with a coworker or an important piece of leverage. He seemed to be at last seeing Harry as he really was.

"Well, I don't like it, but that woman and you must know what you're doing. Apparently some people _do_ like it. You can keep the damn skating lessons," he muttered, walking past Harry.

Privately, Vernon was satisfied. Not only were they successfully squashing the magic out of the boy, he was becoming a proper playing piece for them. He was finally earning his place in their household.

Harry smiled in triumph.

"I was wrong about you," said Aunt Petunia, reserved, pausing beside Harry as she was walking past him. She murmured, "You're more feminine and Dudley's more masculine. You each have your own thing. I can appreciate your skills, but I wouldn't want my Duddy to be you for the world."

Harry looked over at her in curiosity and surprise. "Careful, Aunt Petunia," he said. "That sounded dangerously close to a compliment."

Aunt Petunia sniffed and walked past him.

Dudley still called Harry "tart," "pansy," and "fag," but without the benefit of his size Dudley had lost his power over Harry. Harry didn't really think Dudley would ever change.

Some things were still the same. The cupboard under the stairs was still his bedroom. He still had his chores (though cooking was a good deal more enjoyable). His birthday still wasn't celebrated, and he still wasn't taken on fun outings.

But most of the rest of Harry Potter's life had greatly improved. He was even in a single, formal family photo above the mantel piece. His smile held no hint of the resentment or manipulation within. It didn't even show the kindness hidden beside it.

Harry knew himself and his smiles well. This was the perfect plastic smile for the perfect plastic dollhouse family - secretly dysfunctional and abusive, outwardly almost perfect.

* * *

He sat Miss Hanzen and Mrs Harkiss together in Mrs Harkiss's counseling office one day.

"I owe the two of you," he said emotionally, "a debt that can never be repaid. You've changed the entire course of my life."

They smiled kindly. "That's what we're here for, Mr Potter, it's why public school exists," said Mrs Harkiss. "To change the lives of ordinary students."

"Ordinary in the sense of not being rich," added Miss Hanzen, amused. "You're not quite ordinary otherwise, Harry."

Harry nearly snorted, smiling wryly. They had no idea.


	4. Update One

I have not posted book one - that would be insanely fast - but I have posted a companion oneshot to this series with some answers to important questions and a hint of things to come.

It's on my author page, entitled _Newton Weasley_.

Enjoy. ;)


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